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[Skyrunner]

I seriously might be the only person who programs as a hobby in my entire school

[Starver]

In sheer "get stuff done fast" power, Ruby is still my favorite.  I can translate what is in my head to code so quickly with it.  Its not appropriate for everything, but man is it ever useful.

That's probably the same reason I use to justify my Perl Fanboy stuff.  Just so flexible and writeable and hackable that in prototyping something (not so much a UI[1], but certainly data processing, and of course anything CGI-ish) I might as well try it out there, and then later on re-write it in whatever stricter-typed programming platform is best suited for making it work efficiently, and for an actual end-user (where applicable[2]).


Ruby is of course essentially a (partly-)Perl derivative/inspired-by/whatever, with many similar paradigms, so I'm not surprised to find the correlation of our respective opinions.


[1] If I can do it all at the command-line rather than have to botch together a PerlTk interface, all the better.  I hate interface design.  I either spend 90% of my time on it making it pretty (to the detriment of the actual workings) or barely get it beyond several "Go buttons" (to initiate "the next behaviour") and one (or maybe two, one essentially STDOUT, one STDERR-ish) message-displaying text widget to let me know that it's found the (next) input file I want to process, processed it and written the results to the (next) output file.  And Tk (compared with the likes of Delphi/Lazarus, especially) is a very easy interface method, in either function- or object-orientated use modes...

[2] I must admit to having some Perl2Exe converted scripts (bloated, but work) doing some occasional yet repeated things for myself, that I've not yet gotten around to doing any other way.

[Shades]

I seriously might be the only person who programs as a hobby in my entire school

This is why it's so hard to hire good programmers (We've found two in half a year of searching, and now I'm being told we need another four by then end of the year..). Most of them only learnt at uni and don't actually enjoy just programming, your work should be a passion not just a job. (And if it's not find a job doing something you *are* passionate about... </rant>)

[Skyrunner]

Well, my case might be special, because (1) I'm a girl, and few girls do engineering, let alone programming, and (2) Korea isn't a good place to be a high school student and actually have a life and hobby.

What language does your organization use, by  the way? I'm curious

[Siquo]

(2) Korea isn't a good place to be a high school student and actually have a life and hobby.

Why is this, if you don't mind my asking?

[Skyrunner]

I blame two things.
One: Relative grading. Your score is lined up on a bell curve with everyone else. Grades are 1 thru 9. The center grades (4,5,6) are one standard deviation and are 50% of the total. Colleges say "screw you" if you don't have a 1, 2 or 3. 75% of Korea will fail. Sad truth. I don't care if you got a 99, fifty others in yer school got one too, so you're a grade 3.
The school year consists of sem1 midterm + sem1 finals + sem2 midterm + sem2 finals + the time between. You don't go to school to learn, you go there to be tested ._.

Two: As if One wasn't bad enough, various policies and situations along with the Korean traditional Confucianism caused zealous parents to send their children to "hakwons", private insitutions that serve to raise the bar. Nearly everyone goes to one, so math, Korean, and English are especially overheated.
Also, the fact that English is way too easy doesn't help, especially considering One.


TLDR: Relative grading plus overcompetitive "market" (of students)

The only worse place to go to high school would be Japan.

PS: Korea has the highest college graduation rate in the world, because you can't get hired at all if you only graduated high school, except for technical high schools. Also, colleges are severely ranked by name value.

Erm.. I don't know if I really answered your question. Also, sorry for those who've already read the above in other threads xD I just feel so strongly about it -_-

Another addendum: Korea is a horrid place to be a programmer. Various reasons, and even more so for females...

[Shades]

Well, my case might be special, because (1) I'm a girl, and few girls do engineering, let alone programming, and (2) Korea isn't a good place to be a high school student and actually have a life and hobby.

Your experience to what I had at uni as well, and what I've heard from the few graduates we've talked to, but I don't have any definitive study to show it's common. Just venting really.

What language does your organization use, by  the way? I'm curious

The majority is either C++, Java or PHP. Although the devops team use a fair amount of Ruby as well (and finding decent devops people seems even harder than finding decent programmers)

[MorleyDev]

A lot of the people on my computer science course don't seem to know why they're taking computer science in the first place. They certainly don't seem to enjoy the field or find it interesting.

Personally I don't see why you'd waste the time and money going to university if you didn't find the topic at least interesting but my only dilemma was whether I found psychology or computer science more interesting. I could only see myself getting a career in one of them by the end of it, and that sure as hell wasn't gonna be psychology xD

[Starver]

[quote author=MorleyDev link=topic=83414.msg3682722#msg3682722 date=1349869772]
and that sure as hell wasn't gonna be psychology xD[/quote]
[eliza]Why do you think that sure as hell wasn't gonna be psychology?[/eliza]

Yeah, that's probably the reason why.  Second-rate Eliza-writers from the computer courses...

[Mephisto]

This is why it's so hard to hire good programmers (We've found two in half a year of searching, and now I'm being told we need another four by then end of the year..). Most of them only learnt at uni and don't actually enjoy just programming, your work should be a passion not just a job. (And if it's not find a job doing something you *are* passionate about... </rant>)

Although the devops team use a fair amount of Ruby as well (and finding decent devops people seems even harder than finding decent programmers)

Come to Indianapolis with me and tell all of my prospective employers that. I'm passionate about software development. I'm pretty good at it. I'm willing and eager to learn whatever technologies they may require but I don't have. I'm asking for significantly below the average salary as I'm a fresh college grad. One of the placement tests I took for a large, rich, (supposedly) prestigious headhunting agency placed me at the world average skill level for C# developers - considering I'm a fresh grad and I can count the number of projects I've used the language for on one hand and have fingers to spare, I consider that to be pretty good. I've had two face-to-face interviews and zero job offers over the past three months.

The only feedback I've gotten was that I need to talk more. The guy in my last interview felt that he asked me too many questions (three or four is considered too many). He wanted me to answer all of the questions that he would have asked me, but without the need of actually asking the questions. I know one of the requirements for being a software developer is the need to be moderately psychic as far as the client's needs are concerned, but I didn't know that need would extend to your boss as well.

[Starver]

I know one of the requirements for being a software developer is the need to be moderately psychic as far as the client's needs are concerned, but I didn't know that need would extend to your boss as well.

Wait... what?  You mean you didn't know?  That's probably the most psychicaly broadcast bit of information there is!  Oh, I see.

Seriously (apart from a brief temptation into "Almost all jobs tend to end up like that"), I'm hopeless at job interviews (when I get them) myself.  But that's for the opposite reason.  Talk too much.  And too quickly.  I don't think before I say things, bananas.  Or perhaps make much armadillo sense while I'm xylophone doing it, la plume de ma tante est dans le jardin.

(At one interview, I spent several minutes talking about DHCP instead of DNS (or perhaps vice-versa), by accident, in response to one question.  Didn't get that job.  Silly mistake.  No, a stupid one.)

Being taciturn or too laconic is bad, but I suspect you can always learn to wisely add more contribution, as opposed to me wishing I could rewind a bit.  I shall not shan't tell you say how much I edited down this post, with the luxury of time that I have at my disposal to do so.  (Still insufficiently, of course.)

[MorleyDev]

Where I work have a nice employment process. After you send in the CV:

Stage 1: A code challenge.
Great, they looked at your CV! Most applicants (pretty much all of them) get to this stage. If you're looking for an internship, or are an inexperienced graduate, you'll be sent a code challenge. Complete it. It's usually something simple like a Shopping Cart in C# with certain requirements, no big deal.

Stage 2: Face-To-Face Interview and Technical Talk.
So your code was decent enough to get to stage 2. Good for you! A fair few applicants will get here. You come in and do the whole interview thing, and then you have to give a short presentation on a Technical Topic. It doesn't have to be related to the business. I did task-based parallel processing and devolving algorithms and programs into tasks that execute when multiple parent tasks finish (it's what I was playing around with at the time), the platform team's latest member did a talk on Peer-To-Peer Networks for MMO games. You just have to demonstrate technical competence and knowledge, something indicating you have a solid head on your soldiers so you can learn.

Stage 3: Pair Programming Session.
You impressed them so much they want to see you work! They bring out a Programming Dojo (things like calculating the winning hand in poker given two hands of cards), and you and a member of the development team work on it together. Most fall at hurdle two so very few manage to get even this far (it's very much a "we are definitely considering hiring you" stage). Most of the rest will fall here because it'll become clear they either won't work well in a Pair Programming environment, or once or twice they somehow winged the earlier stages.

Stage 4: Three Months Employment.
You're hired here. You will be paid for these three months, and at the end of them you will either continue with employment, be fired, or given another three months to "shape up" (failing that three months, fired). It's not common but people do get fired at the end of those three months (in fact someone did not long before I started my internship). Usually it's because they just can't do the pair programming thing and having to communicate with and work with another programmer constantly (though obviously inexcusable behaviour and conduct will get you fired too).

Pass all stages, and you win the prize of employment. The company is very clear they want the best, or people who have the potential to become the best so quality is very important. On the plus, this also means they employee pay is very competitive (want the best you gotta be willing to fork out for it).

[Siquo]

Hmm. I got hired while drinking beer by guys I've known for 10 years. Pay is low, but I get a shitload of freedom, work 32 hours a week with hardly any overtime, get to do cool projects, and we all work for a better tomorrow.

I blame two things.

Those... suck. So if competing is not your thing, you're out by definition, or something? Your english is great, though, you could emigrate

[Nadaka]

Well, my case might be special, because (1) I'm a girl, and few girls do engineering, let alone programming, and (2) Korea isn't a good place to be a high school student and actually have a life and hobby.

What language does your organization use, by  the way? I'm curious

At my job we use java, javascript, plsql and c++ plus a metric crap ton of libraries and technologies that are ridiculously bloated and annoying.

[MorleyDev]

At work the team I'm on use C# and SQL pretty much exclusively. I'm on the platform team so it's the behind-the-scenes server and database stuff (expanding the API for the apps team to use for the showcase apps, and clients to use for their own stuff, that kind of thing).

The apps team work with Javascript, HTML and ASP.NET.

There's also some Ruby rolling around somewhere that gets compiled to HTML for the web pages and used for some in-house monitoring software...

Actually this is interesting, the Apps Team today described IE10 as "the new IE6" in that it broke the majority of the website by doing tonnes of silly things like loading the CSS hacks they put in there to get it working in IE6 and IE7 and applying them 0_o